Jindal: Teach Gun Safety to Protect Kids from Violence

The best protection for America’s children from gun violence including homicide, says Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal, is gun-safety education at school and home.

Jindal, the 13th official entrant into the Republican presidential nomination race, emphasized gun safety in front of a TV studio audience in New Hampshire recently for the WMUR-ABC series, Conversation with the Candidate. He added that a national database of people with mental health and other issues would help keep firearms out of the wrong hands.

Jindal’s response was prompted by a question from ECM’s director in the state, MaryLou Beaver, who observed that at least 28,000 US children and teenagers were killed by guns between 2002 and 2012, and that Louisiana has one of the highest rates in the country overall of gun deaths due to homicide [7:40 in Part 2].

Replying to another audience question, Jindal called high-quality early childhood education a common-sense aim that should be non-partisan. He praised a Louisiana program for assigning letter grades to centers receiving public subsidies and called for better oversight and accountability through meaningful parental information, not micromanagement and red tape.

Jindal commended a different Louisiana program as a means to improve college affordability – merit scholarships to attend in-state schools. Breaking up the “semi-monopoly” of accreditation boards, promoting competition by allowing students to take courses from different providers and easing the transfer of credits all offer potential for cutting costs, he said.

Stay tuned next for our upcoming account of answers to questions about kids from Florida Senator Marco Rubio!Save the Children Action Network, a sponsor of the “Conversation with the Candidate” series, is a key partner in our effort to highlight early childhood issues.